North of Scotland a hot spot for a new way of home work

Published on 15/12/2012 15:13

THE number of people running micro businesses from home is soaring – with Dundee and Aberdeen hot spots for home working a new survey suggests.

Freelance marketplace PeoplePerHour has created a freelance map of Britain – which looks at the way the workforce is spread across the UK.

People going it alone and working from home is believed to be one of the factors behind the recent surprise fall in the level of unemployment. Among the hotspots are Dundee – with an increase of 132 per cent and Aberdeen – a 111 per cent rise.

Xenios Thrasyvoulou, founder and CEO of PeoplePerHour said: “The surge in people selling and buying freelance services is not a coincidence – Britain’s labour market is going through a fundamental change. Traditional employment is unlikely to return to pre-recession levels, as increasingly businesses want a more flexible workforce. They prefer to be able to hire on an as-needed basis, rather than having the cost not just of employing full-time staff but also the additional cost of employees on-site.

“A growing freelance marketplace is the best hope of creating a more flexible workforce, tapping into the wasted resource of tens of thousands of skilled people whose potential is not being realized. Highly-skilled workers are not realizing their potential, and have decided that the flexibility of working as a freelancer will provide them with more opportunities.”